Australia flirts with messed-up American dream

American economist Joseph Stiglitz has a contrarian message for Australians: Don’t become too American.

The Nobel laureate’s rock-star reception in Sydney last week probably drove tea partiers crazy back home as he explained why the U.S. economy isn’t the state-of the-art machine conservatives might think, with its widening income inequality and decrepit infrastructure. It was fascinating to hear Stiglitz take on Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott for trafficking in the same economic ideologies threatening to turn the American dream into a nightmare of permanent haves and have-nots.

“The problem is not the economics; the problem is the politics,” Stiglitz told a capacity crowd of more than 2,000 on July 8, imploring them to reconsider their affection for the U.S. economic model.

The U.S. system still trumps most, but the world might also learn from Australia. It’s that rarest of things: a commodities-based economy that hasn’t succumbed to the natural-resources curse of kleptocracy and authoritarianism. Because the spoils from digging iron ore, coal and copper out of the ground were reasonably well-managed, Australia’s prosperity has been spread more broadly than in the U.S.

In recent decades, median household income has increased at almost twice the pace of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development average, or roughly 3 percent. Nor did Australian politicians deregulate the financial sector to the point where the kids ruled the adults.

Still, the past 10 years saw the emergence of a two-speed economy. Thanks to China’s boom, mining-heavy regions saw a burst of growth, while many urban areas fell behind. That prompted Abbott’s predecessors, Labor Party Prime Ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, to favor taxes on mining. The money would help narrow the wealth gap and finance investments in education, training and infrastructure needed to raise productivity and create jobs.

Abbott’s top priority when he came to office last September was killing all traces of such levies. Far from trickling down, Stiglitz thinks wealth concentration among mining interests and political pandering will make Australia poorer. “If you tax iron ore it’s not going to get mad at you and walk off to another country,” he said, while also rebuking Abbott and his tea party-like “obsession” with debt and deficits.

As politics trumps sound economics, Australia is adopting the most ruinous aspects of the American political landscape. Polarization is now de rigueur in Canberra, where Abbott’s team derides anyone favoring a more moderate path as unfit to govern. Expect little to get done in the capital even as Asian nations in Australia’s backyard restructure their economies and become more competitive.

The deteriorating level of discourse was bemoaned as far back as September 2011, when Gillard was taken aback by jeers directed her way. At rallies, protesters opposed to her views on taxing mining companies and carbon emissions showed up with coffins and “Ditch the Witch” placards. “I don’t like it when I get a sense of a kind of — with all apologies to our American friends — a kind of Americanization of our debate,” she said at a community forum back then.

We’ve seen the Americanization of the election cycle. In February 2013, I wrote about how Australia established a record seven-month-long election campaign almost unheard of in parliamentary democracies. Seven weeks, if that, is more the norm.

More recently, Abbott proposed the Aussie pursuit of U.S.-style college education deregulation, allowing universities to charge what they like come 2016. Maybe the free market should let deans value their services as they see fit, but is sky-high tuition and crushing student debt (the changes would up loan interest rates) really the way to go?

The real danger, the one that has Stiglitz so incensed, is Abbott’s dogmatic reading from a playbook that’s more Ronald Reagan, circa 1984, than economic reality 2014.

Killing mining taxes is only the most obvious of steps in that direction. Natural resources, after all, belong to the Australian people. Anyone can dig them out of the ground. Why should executives at BHP Billiton Ltd. and Rio Tinto Ltd. get wildly rich as many of Australia’s 23 million citizens fall behind?

Part of the “rents” that miners generate should be shared. The fact that it isn’t as mining grows because of Chinese demand, Stiglitz says, explains why Australia’s Gini coefficient, a measure of inequality, is rising. A day after his Sydney talk, Stiglitz buttressed his argument in a Project Sydicate op-ed.

“Australia should be proud of its successes, from which the rest of the world can learn a great deal,” he wrote. “It would be a shame if a misunderstanding of what has happened in the U.S., combined with a strong dose of ideology, caused its leaders to fix what is not broken.”

Abbott might want to tend to what is broken, if polls are any guide. He’s no more popular than Gillard was. At his next speech, he may be confronted with “Ditch the Americans” signs.

Bamboo ceiling’ blocking Asian Australians, says commissioner

A ”bamboo ceiling” is preventing Asian Australians from taking their share of leadership positions, the Race Discrimination Commissioner, Tim Soutphommasane, has suggested.

In a speech delivered in Perth on Thursday, Dr Soutphommasane said while children of Australians of migrant backgrounds outperformed the children of Australian-born parents in education and employment, the nation’s cultural diversity was not represented in positions of leadership.

”Equality of opportunity isn’t enjoyed in equal measure in all spheres,” Dr Soutphommasane said. ”Our efforts in opening the doors of power to all who knock are more questionable.”

Dr Soutphommasane said while nearly half of all Australians were either born overseas or had a parent who was born overseas, and about one in 10 Australians had an Asian background, only a handful of members of Federal Parliament had non-European ancestry, and less than 2 per cent had Asian ancestry. Of 83 secretaries and deputy secretaries of federal government departments, only three had Asian origins.

Asian Australian were also badly underrepresented among the management ranks of business and executive positions at leading universities, he said.

Dr Soutphommasane acknowledged other business leaders of non-Asian backgrounds, such as Irish-born Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce and former Telstra boss Sol Trujillo, who has Mexican ancestry, had also been the victims of racial prejudice, but questioned whether Asian Australian faced greater hurdles than those from other backgrounds.

”Is there a bamboo ceiling that exists in the same way that a glass ceiling exists for women?”

Dr Soutphommasane said an optimistic view was that the underrepresentation of Asian Australians in leadership positions was due to the fact that large-scale Asian immigration hadn’t started until the 1970s and Asian-Australian leaders were still in the ”pipeline”. But he said a more critical view was that the situation replicated a ”pattern of invisibility” relating to Asian Australian within Australian culture. He said in the media, Asian faces were largely confined to presenting cooking programs. The stereotype of Asians as law-abiding, hard-working and studious disguised a more negative view of Asians as passive, acquiescent and subservient.

Referring to the indentured Asian labourers of the 19th and early 20th century, Dr Soutphommasane said Australia needed to avoid the creation of a new class of ”professional Asian-Australian coolies in the 21st century – a class of well-educated, ostensibly overachieving Asian Australian, who may nonetheless be permanently locked out from the ranks of their society’s leadership”.

Man accused of murder of Renea Lau faces Melbourne court

A HOMELESS man charged with the murder and rape of Chinese pastry chef Renea Lau near Melbourne’s Botanic Gardens in the early hours of Saturday morning had been diagnosed with drug-induced psychosis, his lawyer says.

Scott Allen Miller, 42, appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court today, charged with one count of murder and two of rape.

Mr Miller was arrested on the NSW south coast on Monday and extradited to Melbourne yesterday.

Ms Lau, 32, was walking to a dessert shop to start her early morning shift when she was attacked.

Her body was found by joggers.

Ms Lau’s family are preparing to travel to Australia.

Dressed in a green prison uniform with his long hair pulled back, Mr Miller spoke only to brief his lawyer during the short proceedings.

He stared straight ahead for much of the hearing, at one point appearing to shed tears.

Mr Miller’s legal aid lawyer Sarah Pratt told Magistrate Duncan Reynolds her client had previously been diagnosed with drug-induced psychosis, and had a mouth infection which would require treatment.

She said it was his first time in custody.

Mr Reynolds ordered a forensic sample taken from Mr Miller be retained and that he be remanded in custody to reappear for a committal mention on October 24.

This is a direct extract from the attached submission by Seven Network, and it refers to your integrity:

[It is important to note that the investigation by the Australian Federal Police was not in relation to any criminal conduct by Seven or any other person. It is not a criminal offence for a convicted criminal to give an interview to the media. It is not a criminal offence for a media organisation to publish such an interview. And importantly, it is not a criminal offence to pay for such an interview or to receive payment in relation to it.

Even if there had been an agreement to pay Schapelle Corby for her story, there was never, and could not be, any allegation or suspicion that a criminal offence had been committed by Seven West Media or any other person in relation to such an agreement. Under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (Cth) (PocA), the power of the Australian Federal Police is to apply to a court for orders to confiscate any literary proceeds paid to persons

convicted of certain crimes. This is a discretionary civil remedy. Under the Proceeds of Crime Act, the AFP may commence civil (not criminal) proceedings to stop such payments being made. The Court may grant the application, having taken into account various factors including the length of time since the crime was committed and the public interest in payments for interviews being made.

Despite this, Seven West Media and its representatives were treated in the same manner as one might expect in relation to serious criminal conduct. This has resulted in serious damage to the reputation of Seven West Media, its parent company Seven Group Holdings, and various individuals employed by these companies and their legal representatives.

It is extremely disappointing that the Attorney General Senator George Brandis and the Minister for Justice Michael Keenan did not make more substantial independent enquiries as to what had occurred before indicating their support for the AFP’s actions. The public endorsement of the treatment of Seven by senior political figures significantly added to the damage inflicted on Seven West Media and Seven Group Holdings in this process.

The subsequent failure to follow up clear errors and poor judgment as they came to light seems extremely difficult to explain. In stark contrast to the immediate aftermath of the search warrants, there has been no public statement from any Government representative since Justice Jagot’s ruling on 26 March to quash the search warrants and her finding that the AFP had materially misled the Magistrates who had issued them.]

We can all read between the lines, Mr Brandis. You, Hockey and Newman, were frothing at the mouth in supporting armed AFP officers when they were illegally raiding Seven Network and Mercedes Corby’s lawyer. Desperate, some might say, to shut Schapelle Corby down, to stop her exposing The Expendable Project material to the public.

Seven Network spell it out don’t they? As soon as the judge stated the obvious, essentially that this was an illegal political raid, you shut up shop, all of you. No-one had a word to say anymore. Not a word.

JUDGE JAGOT ON THE AFP

Shall we take a look at the lies the AFP trotted out to try to cover-up its illegal political raids? I’ll remind you: they said it was a “clerical error”. Here’s what the judge had to say:

[“The characterisation of the clerical error as “mere” is more difficult to accept if by “mere” it is meant to suggest the error was trivial or insignificant. The statements are not immaterial typographical errors or errors of detail. The statements are of the most serious kind and the second respondent[ a Magistrate], by his signature, affirmed he was satisfied they were true. The second respondent did so in the context of a warrant which identifies in the second condition numerous individuals as “suspects…that are the subject of the investigation”.]

So they lied, again, outright, to everyone in sight. What have you done about this, Mr Brandis? Policemen are supposed to be honest, aren’t they, and not flagrant liars? Or is it OK to lie if they are protecting the backsides of themselves, and corrupt former ministers?

I’m not interested in a cobbled explanation, Mr Brandis, because I already know. The old boys club was as desperate as the AFP to protect Keelty, Ellison, etc. The nasty little enclave jumped on the bandwagon as eagerly as Negus, and eventually got what it wanted: the illegal human rights abusing gagging of Schapelle Corby.

We congratulate you for having done your duty without delay as our Police Commission because your men are indeed charging those bigots who dare to attack innocent younger people just because the victims happens to be God’s children of another racial make-up. We must not allow racial bigotry to happen to anyone in the 21st century.